A silent distillery is a distillery that is no longer in use. It could have been mothballed (meaning decommissioned for a period of time) due to financial strain or a lack of demand.
The southernmost island of the Southern Hebrides is is the fifth-largest Scottish island. Whisky-wise, Islay is characterised by malts that are pungent with peat, smoke and salinity, revealing their complexity layer after layer. There are eight working distilleries on Islay.
Even the island’s name is shrouded in complexity; the proper pronunciation of Islay is ‘eye-la’.